14 Dec
2002
14 Dec
'02
7:34 p.m.
* Is there a
good reason to make event system timestamps
relate to musical time rather than audio time?
Again, I would rather let the timestamps deal with audio time. Hosts
which work in bars/beats/frames
should be capable of doing the necessary conversion. Remember, there are plenty of parameters which might need some time
indications but
which are completely unrelated to notions of tempo. I'm thinking
mostly about LFOs and other modualtion sources here (although there
might be good grounds for lumping these in with frequency controlled
parameters.) Just as I would rather
yes, sometimes you might want to control them quite independently of
tempo. but lots of the most interesting instruments in the software
synth world now allow tempo sync as an option, and its very nice to
have it available.
see pitch control make as few assumptions as possible
about tuning
and temperament, I would like to see time control make as few
assumptions as possible about tempo and duration. Sequencers
generally do operate within the shared assumptions of traditional
concepts of periodic rhythm, but in a lot of music (from pure ambient
to many non-Western musics to much avant-garde music) such notions
are irrelevant at best.
true, and i've been known to make this point myself. but the fact that
there is a lot of music in which periodic rythmn is irrelevant doesn't
erase all the music in which its a central organizing principle. coming
up with an API that doesn't facilitate periodic (even if highly
variable) structure when arranging things in time makes working with
such music more cumbersome than it need be, some of the time.
--p